Automated UDT is defined as a UDP-based data transfer. UDT is typically built on top of UDP by adding reliability control and congestion control. UDT may be used to provide a high performance transfer interface to distributed data-intensive applications over a wide area network. In instances where TCP seldom operates efficiently, UDT may provide an alternative to data transfer. UDT can also be used in other situations where TCP is not suitable (e.g., multimedia streaming, firewall data transfers, partial reliability, etc.).
The flow of data traffic within communications networks is predominantly based on the proprietary transmission control protocol (TCP). UDT data flows can share the available bandwidth fairly, while accommodating TCP data traffic. UDT operates at the application level. UDT supports user-defined congestion control algorithms with simple setup configuration. Users may modify UDT to suit various situations. UDT is based on the user datagram protocol (UDP), which makes it easier to traverse data firewalls. In addition, multiple UDT flows can share a single UDP port, which is advantageous since a firewall can usually only open one UDP port for all UDT connections present.
As indicated above, implementing the UDT protocol can increase data communication efficiency in certain circumstances, however, integration with UDT and proprietary TCP communication networking protocols presents challenges when implementing such hybrid protocol suites.